Optimal Aging

Rethinking Fitness for 50+: Non-Linear Thinking, Systems & Stability with Chris Liddle

• Jay Croft

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In this solo episode of the Optimal Aging Podcast, guest host Chris Liddle takes the mic to explore why the traditional, linear ways of thinking don't serve aging clients or the fitness professionals who work with them. Drawing from his experience coaching adults 50+ both online and in-person, Chris dives deep into non-linear thinking, systems design, and holistic strategies that foster client trust, retention, and business sustainability.

You'll learn why older clients aren't less motivated—they're simply less tolerant of friction. Chris shares actionable strategies for fitness professionals to better serve this powerful demographic by rethinking how they show up, structure sessions, and design long-term career stability. He also explains why Jay Croft's book Selling Longevity is essential reading for your 2026 business plan.

If you serve people over 50 or want to build a resilient fitness business, this episode is packed with insights you can put to work right away.

Guest Host: Chris Liddle
Instagram: @christianliddle

Mentioned Book:
Selling Longevity by Jay Croft – https://a.co/d/iumKfjT

Episode Topics & Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction by Chris Liddle
 01:00 – Why linear thinking fails with aging, fitness, and business
 03:00 – What is non-linear thinking? And why it matters after 40
 04:00 – Systems thinking: Creating calm, consistent client experiences
 05:30 – Case study: The impact of trainer punctuality
 06:30 – Nervous system regulation and gym environments
 07:30 – Why older clients quietly leave broken systems
 08:00 – Another example: Listening to client feedback and adapting programs
 09:00 – Holistic thinking: Seeing beyond just the workout
 10:00 – Why older clients care about gym cleanliness, systems, and trust
 11:00 – Linear vs. lateral income thinking in fitness careers
 12:00 – What’s a media kit? How trainers can stabilize income
 13:00 – Ethical brand partnerships and user-generated content
 14:00 – Enhancing income stability with strategic collaborations
 15:00 – Time to reflect: Audit your systems, time, adaptability, and fragility
 17:00 – Why Jay Croft’s book Selling Longevity is a must-read
18:00 – The power of clarity, messaging, and Prime Fit Content
20:00 – Using guest experts like dietitians to build trust and results
21:00 – Nutrition’s role in holistic client transformation
22:00 – Divergent thinking and designing calm, reliable systems
23:00 – Final thoughts: Which system, if improved, would make the biggest impact?

Resources Mentioned:


🎤 Host: Jay Croft
Helping fitness professionals grow businesses by reaching people over 50.
🌐 Website: https://primefitcontent.com

📧 Contact: jay@primefitcontent.com

📱 Instagram: @primefitcontent

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SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to the Optimal Aging Podcast. And I want to start this episode with a simple observation. Your first observation might be that this is not Jay Croft. Who is this? Well, to answer that, my name is Chris Little. You may recognize me as a past guest interviewed by Jay earlier this past year, and I also have had the privilege to help him with his podcast, The Optimal Aging Podcast. And in this one, I'm going to expand on some of my experiences as someone who works with numerous people in the 50 plus age category, both online and in person. So most of us are taught to think in straight lines. A leads to B, B leads to C, and if you do the right things in the right order for long enough, you get the outcome. That way of thinking shows up everywhere in fitness. Get certified, get clients, train harder, be more disciplined, and then scale when you're ready. And it shows up in how we talk about aging. Train now so you don't decline later, eat well so you don't have problems, stay active so you can age well. But here's the problem, and it's a problem that a lot of people are probably facing when they're doing their bookkeeping and when they're projecting each of their quarterly revenue updates. Aging doesn't happen in straight lines. Bodies don't respond in straight lines. Motivation doesn't operate in straight lines. Careers definitely don't progress in straight lines. And fitness businesses absolutely don't survive in straight lines. So as we age, life becomes less predictable and not more. More variables enter the picture, more responsibilities, more stress, more history in the body. And that's where linear thinking quietly starts to fail. So today I want to zoom out and talk about something broader. Something that sits underneath all of this. I want to talk about non-linear thinking. Welcome to the Optimal Aging Podcast. Be sure to rate five stars on your podcast platform of choice. Leave a review, subscribe, check the podcast out on YouTube, and be sure to like the video when you watch it. Every interaction helps, and it does profound things for people who are looking to age optimally now. Nonlinear thinking is an umbrella term. Instead of A to B to C, it looks like a web. Ideas connect in multiple directions, small inputs create large effects, details overlap, patterns matter more than steps. Insight doesn't come from following instructions or reading a textbook. It honestly comes from seeing relationships and listen to what hasn't yet been said. And this matters enormously for optimal aging. Because after about 30, and for context, I'm gonna be turning 34 in about a month or two. And especially from what I've heard from clients, colleagues, friends, family, after 40 and 50, people don't stop caring. In reality, they stop compromising. They stop tolerating friction, they stop tolerating chaos, they stop tolerating environments that don't respect their time, their energy, their nervous system, or their body. When you're younger, in your mid-twenties, you tolerate a lot. You tolerate the loud gyms, you tolerate rush starts, you tolerate tardiness from the trainer, from the front desk person, you tolerate being sore all the time, you tolerate being confused, and you tolerate being treated like a number. But as you age, something shifts. You don't lose motivation, you lose patience for nonsense. And when patience disappears, systems start to matter more than effort. This is where systems thinking comes in. Systems thinking asks a different question. Not what's the next step, but how does this part influence the entire ecosystem? Because a gym isn't just a place to exercise. It's an experience system. The lighting, the noise, the cleanliness, the smell, the scheduling, staff energy, predictability, communication, whether or not you dust the lights makes a difference. And none of these things are the workout. But together, they determine whether someone feels safe, calm, and willing to keep showing up. And this becomes more important, not less, as people age. Let me give you a very simple case study. Something that I've witnessed in my work as a trainer. If you surveyed every client in the gym and asked, is your trainer always on the training floor on time or already in the facility at least 10 minutes before your session begins? How many people would say yes? Something that's surprisingly common is this. Clients arrive early for their session, and their trainer is often running late. Two minutes late. Maybe they're finishing up a prior client, maybe they didn't calculate traffic. A great deal of struggling trainers are rushing in at the start time. The sessions begin with a state of chaos that the trainer excuses because they feel like the client has no other option. On paper, to the trainer, this might look minor, but in practice it's truly not. Being early isn't just about professionalism, it's about nervous system regulation. It says to the client, the end user, the person who is hoping to have the best experience possible, that you, the fitness professional, aren't rushed, that they are not an inconvenience, and that there is time to do things right. When that calm does not exist in the training session, the clients feel it immediately, especially older clients. They feel rushed, they feel like they're in the way, they feel like their time is less valuable, and this isn't a character flaw, and it's not laziness. This is a system design issue. If your schedule is so back to back that it requires you to sprint between sessions, the system is broken, not the person. Create a buffer between sessions if need be, or situate your sessions where you can calmly transition from the end of one session to the start of the next without compromising on either experience. Now here's a key insight worth writing down. Older clients don't adapt to broken systems. They leave them quietly. And when you think that they just gave up on their journey, they're working with another coach who showed up on time. Here's another case study that fits perfectly into the systems lens. Many clients, especially older ones, have never experienced a trainer changing an exercise on the fly and then updating the program going forward. What usually happens instead is the client will say something feels off, and the trainer says, that should be fine. Or the trainer says, let's just see how it goes. Or the trainer says, just push through this set. You're gonna you're gonna do good. And the client does because they trust the trainer. But it's not that they're doing it because it feels good, it's because friction makes them feel uncomfortable, and they haven't had a chance to advocate for themselves yet in their fitness journey. So what happens when the coach provides that opportunity for that client? You see, the thing is that what that client learns in that moment isn't about biomechanics. What they're learning and what's implied is that their discomfort isn't relevant, that the program is fixed, it's static, it's not dynamic, and that they have to adapt to it, not the other way around. And for an aging client, adaptability is competence. So if we flip the script and the trainer says, hey, let's change that, no big deal. And you know what? We're not coming back to it. To the client that signals listening, safety, and long-term thinking. Clients don't leave because something hurt once, they leave because nothing has changed. Again, it's it's not a problem of motivation, and it's not a problem of how you're marketing your new session promotion. It's a systems problem. Let's zoom out even further. We're going to talk about holistic thinking. And holistic thinking means seeing the whole picture instead of reducing everything to isolated parts. So we're going to see bodies, environment, communication, stress, money, trust. And all of it interacts. It overlaps throughout each and every one of your interactions with your individual human beings. This is why older clients care about things that younger clients often overlook. The dust on the walls, the clean bathrooms, the Kleenex and towels, a place to sit, clear signage, wiped equipment, a predictable flow of fellow clients, people to meet, people to connect with, so that you know that you're not going to a business that's on the brink of shutting down. All of these things aren't bougie or luxury. They're signals. They say this place is thoughtful, this place is safe, and this place respects me. Not only that, but it also signals this place isn't gonna go bankrupt next week. And once people pass a certain age, they stop compromising on these details because they've been around the block a few times. If something doesn't meet this demographic standards, they will leave. And this same nonlinear, holistic lens applies to money as well. Most fitness professionals are taught to think linearly about income. I train, I get paid. That's it. But that's fragile. One injury, one bad month, one life event, and suddenly the entire system is under pressure. This is where lateral thinking becomes critical. Lateral thinking means deliberately stepping outside of the obvious path, and instead of asking, how do I train more hours, you ask, how else could value move through this system? This is where things like media kits, ethical brand partnerships, cross-promotion, user-generated content, education, writing, and speaking come into play. Not as a sellout, not as compromising values, but as stability mechanisms. And to give you some context as to what I mean about media kits, media kits are what you would present to an advertiser with the analytics of your listens, your views on a podcast, or your reach on a social media platform to make a case of value for them to agree to a paid collaboration with you. And so an ethical partnership via a media kit or even an ethical brand partnership that is otherwise known as user-generated content, where you're producing something, promoting another person's brand in exchange for money, could be as simple as endorsing a specific brand of dumbbells. It could be as simple as endorsing a brand of creatine that you trust, or it could be something along the lines of partnering with a local meal prep company that provides meals that help people over 50 stay on track with their nutrition when they're starting to struggle with cooking, but they're able to check all the other boxes, they're able to get their necessary amount of movement, but this is the one thing that keeps them from ordering delivery for McDonald's or a fast food option. Integrating all of these alternative methods to stabilize your income by all means is not selling out. And it's not compromising values, but it's stability, and it's a mechanism that you can build to be predictable. You can anticipate when income is going to come your way based on how your different pitches are going, where in the sales pipeline they are. And if you have trouble with that, that's where you go to a subject matter expert to show you the ropes of sales skills, which is honestly a skill that you should refine as a fitness professional or gym owner if you haven't already refined it. So ethical UGC is simply people promoting products they already use and trust transparently in a way that supports their livelihood. And media kits allow fitness professionals to communicate their value clearly without scrambling or underpricing themselves. Not only can this be used for podcasts, but it could also be used to speak at paid conferences or to speak at different seminars for other industries. In my career, I've gotten paid to speak for 20 minutes and was able to generate$500 that month from that 20-minute speaking gig. So there truly is an abundance of possibilities, but you can't achieve them without opening your mind to this realm of your career, whether you're a gym owner or just a personal trainer or coach. And cross-promotion allows businesses to strengthen each other instead of competing in isolation. And this can work for trainers working at the same facility, but it can also work for a trainer collaborating with a massage therapist, or maybe it is a physical therapist or physiotherapist. The goal isn't more money, the goal is less pressure. Because when financial pressure decreases, everything else improves. Patience improves, coaching quality improves, decision making improves, environment improves. This is nonlinear thinking in action. Now at this point, I'm going to pause intentionally because this is a great moment. We're about halfway through the episode, and I want the insights that you're gaining to become actions. I want you to take initiative, feel that pressure, to put some things in motion, and maybe write down your to-do list of what your next steps are. If you're listening while driving or walking and you need to find a roadside turnout or a place to sit down and write in your notebook, take that opportunity because that might be the single most valuable step that you take to make change in your 2026. If you want to pause the episode here, reflect, or take notes, do that. And here are a few action steps to integrate what you've heard so far. First, you're gonna do a time respect audit. Ask yourself honestly, do clients ever wait for me? Do sessions ever start rushed? Am I mentally present before the hour begins? And if every session started calm, what downstream problems would quietly disappear? Now second, we're gonna do an adaptability check. When was the last time that you permanently removed an exercise from a program? Not modified it for one session and not coached a person through it so they would just do it despite their feedback? But when was the last time you actually removed it? And where might someone be tolerating discomfort and pushing through the pain instead of thriving and having a complete, full, and happy experience? Thirdly, we're going to do a fragility check. Where does everything fall apart if one thing goes wrong? One client leaving, or one missed paycheck, or one bad week. Maybe you get it cold. Does it sabotage your business? Now that in itself isn't a problem with discipline or with your drive. It's simply a system asking to be redesigned. This is also a very natural place to highlight why prime fit content exists. And I want to add this personally. As someone who is already integrating Jay's depth of experience with my own in-person and online training offers here in Canada, working with clients both locally and internationally, I can genuinely say that the things that Jay highlights with his guests and the things that Jay highlights in all of the offers that he has, whether it be his book available on Amazon or the value gained through enrolling in Prime Fit content, there's a lot of opportunity left on the table if you have not engaged with Jay to integrate more into your business. And that's also why I want to specifically highlight why Jay Croft's book, Selling Longevity, is such a powerful asset for your 2026 client acquisition plan, and why this podcast itself is one of the most underrated free resources available when it comes to making the thinking shifts required to keep growing year after year. If you don't have a plan, you likely don't have a profitable business. And that alone is why this book is likely one of the things that many people are missing right now. Selling longevity is available internationally on Amazon. Just search for JCroft at Amazon.com. Education, communication, and clarity aren't just marketing jargon designed to sell you things, it's infrastructure. These elements help fitness professionals and aspiring fitness entrepreneurs like you and I to articulate value. They help businesses align expectations, and they help clients understand why decisions are being made. And they reduce the friction across the entire system. When content messaging and standards are clear in the ways that they would be through Prime Fit Content, everything else becomes easier. So if you are thinking about fitness as a long game, for yourself or for the people you serve, Prime Fit Content is a resource worth spending real time with. And again, as I've said moments ago, if you want to pause here, come back to the episode in a day or two, reflect and take notes, do that. The rest of the episode will be waiting for you after this short and sweet message from Jay.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey, are you a fitness professional trying to grow your business with people over 50? If you are, then you need to know how to communicate with them, how to market to them, and how to get them to trust you with their fitness, well-being, and money. We're talking about millions of people who are a little older than the typical market that the fitness industry usually pursues. They have more money, more time, and better motivation to make the best long-term fitness consumers you'll find anywhere. If you're not focusing on them, you should be.content.com. That's prime like prime of your life.com.

SPEAKER_01:

Back to the show. Now let's bring this back together. Together with one more system example that ties everything we've discussed into a single loop: nutrition. Because many gyms focus exclusively on training, and nutrition becomes avoided, or oversimplified, or outsourced mentally. But there's a massive, massive opportunity. Bringing in a highly qualified, highly educated, registered dietitian for guest presentations, educational talks, QA sessions, and workshops. This isn't to replace coaching or to cannibalize any of the nutrition adjacent offers you may have, such as just general coaching. But this is to enhance the ecosystem and to help people understand that you are hosting a one-stop shop that will solve all of their problems no matter how nuanced or complicated they may get down the road. And furthermore, this creates better health markers, better recovery, better body composition, and better understanding. And yes, better visible results. Everybody that I talk to, and everybody who's ever been on this podcast wants to be happy. But we also want to look good, even if we don't say it explicitly because we're trying not to upset anyone. When clients see results they recognize in the mirror, retention takes care of itself. This is systems thinking, this is holistic thinking, this is lateral thinking, you're not crossing scope, you're building trust, you're building referrals, and you're building outcomes. Finally, this is where divergent thinking comes in. Divergent thinking means generating multiple paths instead of committing to a single fragile one. There isn't one way to coach well, age well, run a gym, or build a career. There are many. But they all share something in common. They all rely on standards and not heroic actions. Being early, listening, adapting, collaborating, designing calm, and reducing that pressure. Nonlinear thinking doesn't create chaos. It creates options. And options are what keep people training, coaching, and thriving for longer. So as we bring this episode to a close, and I want to thank Jay again for giving me this opportunity to guest host for him, I want to leave you with this. Optimal aging isn't built on one professional exhibiting main character energy and expecting everyone they serve to follow suit. It's built on quiet systems that compound over time, much like being frugal and saving your pocket change. So if you fix just one system that we talked about today, just one of the systems, which of those would create the biggest ripple effect for your business six months from now? Because when the system works, the effort and the dedication finally gets to matter. And that's what makes clients feel good. That's what makes a business thrive. That's what brings in new leads, and that's what's going to help your business. Thanks for tuning in, and we can both look forward to Jay returning for your next episode.

Head Shot

Jay Croft

Host